It's a question that has probably crossed many of our minds: What will the stores of the future be like? The thing is, the future is now for technology, as it is advancing very fast, constantly surprising us with innovations.
A few decades ago, it would never have occurred to us that there would be shoppers who would make our purchases in retail or that there would be dark stores. Today, these are some of the new trends that have established themselves in the retail world.
Interactive stores also exist in some countries, where in addition to the products, there are spaces that users can use. This is the case of the Nike store, located in New York, which has 5 floors, where sporting goods are displayed next to basketball and soccer courts, and jogging machines, which customers can use while visiting the store.
Another example is the Wow store that opened this year in Madrid, which mixes the physical with the digital. Its creators summarize it as digital shopping in a physical store, since there are no salespeople, traditional checkout counters or static showcases. What you find in this new commercial bet are smart mirrors and digital fitting rooms. Purchases can be made through interactive screens or from the cell phone and products can be taken at the time or request to be sent home.
Undoubtedly, brands and retail will continue to innovate to deliver services with more technology, but until that happens, we wanted to know how our team imagines the stores of the future. Here are some opinions:
"I imagine the stores of the future with augmented reality, wider aisles, with featured or premium products, if you prefer to call them that. Perhaps the concept of augmented reality will be applied at the time of entering and walking the aisles. The payment experience will be by RFID as it is already being used today", Kjietil Waghorn Troncoso, Commercial Manager Peru .
"I imagine them with a lot of technology that will allow us to collect more and more data every day and to go through each aisle. At the same time, I think there will be sensors (not images) to identify which varieties the consumer chooses and adjust the product mix even more. For example, if you go to the lipstick aisle, you will take more than one variety to see their colors, and the minute you do this exercise, the aisle will be able to identify which variety you looked at or window-shopped", Andrés Morán Häberle, Corporate Commercial Director .
"Although e-commerce has gained relevance as a purchasing channel in the last couple of years, brick-and-mortar is not going to disappear, but it will definitely change.
Supermarkets need to reinvent the path to purchase that their customers have today; they must offer a better shopping experience and give the customer a reason to set foot in the stores. Technologies such as smart shopping carts, self-payment, interactive displays, programs that collect data on customers' shopping habits and behavior are just the beginning of this transformation. In my vision, the next step of the brick and mortar would be a hybrid of channels, where the store is a physical place, but can provide a personalized experience through augmented reality, Montserrat Nájera , Development Manager for Mexico.
"I think it will be hybrid a little bit what Amazon does, imaging and sensors. Today RFID on every product, tomorrow something else. This trend will be forced by the big channels: Walmart, Tesco and so on. They will dictate the technology and so everyone will adopt it. Today it may be expensive, but once it is chosen, everyone will be able to have it. And the customer will still visit the physical store but in a very fast and efficient way, since offers and promotions will be differentiated, retail will recommend the purchase of customers in a very precise way, which will shorten the visit, and improve the shopping experience.
On the other hand, in terms of replenishment or promotion, everyone will be a robot, replenishing in rooms optimized for them. And the suppliers will deliver the products in formats arranged so that the replenishment systems can take them and place them on the shelves in a simple way", Fernando Betteley Co-founder of Datamind.
"I believe that assisted selling in perishables will end (it is an operational headache for many reasons and retailers have been trying to kill it for a while now, but it implies a change in customers' shopping habits). There is less and less incentive to go to a point of sale, so there will be a lot of investment in the "shopping experience" and associated services at the point of sale. For example, if you cannot find a product, there must be a commitment to deliver it within the next 24 hours (by scanning the strap through the chain's application).
I believe that in the future (we are already seeing it now) there will be fewer "isolated" stores and they will be present only in malls or in places where there are many other services: banks, clothing stores, telephone, automotive, etc. And finally, intelligent carts that allow the totalized purchase to be made, so that at the time of payment the customer will only have to type the cart code and pay through a digital means (ending the physical cash payment) ... important to capture information", Ricardo Vilches, Customer Success leader .
